Last year, domestic banks entered into contracts for the purchase of gold miners 205.155 tons of precious metal, which is 4.7% more than in the previous year (195.89 tons), according to the Bulletin of Gold Miner https: // gold. 1prime. com /. Thus, banks bought out about 67% of all gold produced in the country for the year. The leaders in the purchase of precious metals are the three leading banks with state participation: VTB, Sberbank and Gazprombank. The share of the first in 2017. had 63.9 tons of metal, the second and third bought 43 and 38.1 tons respectively. Major purchases were made for the purpose of further resale to the Central Bank. In total, in 2017 g. to replenish the gold and foreign exchange reserves, the Central Bank acquired from banks 223.95 tons of gold, becoming the absolute record holder in the world. "Banks are buying gold for quite understandable reasons," explained Vice-President of the Golden Mint House Alexei Vyazovsky. - Yellow metal grows in price by 7 - 8% annually. This is a good dollar return for both credit institutions and customers (for comparison: foreign currency deposits yield a maximum of 1 - 2%) ". In addition, according to the expert, through the banks gold is bought by persons who can fall under the new US sanctions. "They are now frantically searching for ways to withdraw their capital from the West, and precious metals - a convenient way to save and save money," - said Vyazovsky. As for the Central Bank, here, according to the expert, for the last ten years the volume of purchase of precious metal increased fourfold, exceeding 1800 tons. "The Central Bank does this, by the way, for the same reasons as the oligarchs who have fallen under the sanctions," Vyazovsky said.. - There is always a risk that if the confrontation with the West goes too far, our holdings (primarily US Treasury bonds, with more than $ 100 billion invested) can be arrested. But the US authorities will not be able to arrest the gold bars in the Moscow storage facilities of the Central Bank ". Attempts to "go to gold" are being undertaken recently by many countries of the world, resulting in another wave of rising prices for precious metal, whose quotes are at $ 1360 per ounce. All this occurs against the backdrop of uncertainty about the future policy of the US Federal Reserve, which in fact determines the value of the most important asset of the world financial system - the US dollar. Many investors and states are not ready to "sit on needles" and expect an outcome. In this situation, it is easier for them to reduce risks by turning their capital into "eternal values". The main of such values ??is precisely gold. A separate topic that significantly increased nervousness in the whole "golden world", in recent years is the return of its gold reserves by Germany. Since the Cold War, this country has kept a significant part of its gold outside the country. In the middle of the last century, fearing the invasion of the USSR, she was forced to transfer abroad - to New York, London and Paris - a significant part of the gold available to her. In 2013 g. a program was launched to return to the homeland of a significant part of the German gold reserve: 300 tons from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and 374 tons from the Bank of France. At the same time, the process of returning German gold from the United States from the very beginning was accompanied by serious scandals. So, in 2011 the. The Federal Court of Auditors of Germany, in a confidential report that opened a year later, criticized the Bundesbank (the Central Bank of Germany) for not controlling the safety of the gold reserve.

From this moment on the world rumors spread that in fact there is no German gold in the American storage facilities for a long time. At the same time, a legend was born that the gold of the Federal Republic of Germany had long been used by Americans for their own purposes, and the bullions in the storehouses, in fact - gilded tungsten bars. All this led to the fact that Berlin began talking about the repatriation of US gold. Fortunately, a significant part of its gold reserves Germany in recent years still managed to return.